Frederick Griffith

Frederick Griffith (1879-1941) was a British bacteriologist whose 1928 experiment discovered bacterial transformation and also allowed humans, for the first time, to control a movement of chemicals holding units of inheritance.

Biography
Frederick Griffith was born in Hale, Lancashire, England, and he was a locally-known physician when he made a 1928 experiment on bacteria in an attempt to discover a cure to pneumonia. He discovered that in heat-killed, disease-causing bacteria was a factor which could transform harmless bacteria into disease-causing bacteria, testing it on mice. He then decided to take the disease-causing bacteria and heat it up, breaking it up. He then took the solution of the dead bacteria fragments and mixed it with the harmless bacteria, discovering that the dead bacteria fragments could transfer inheritance to the harmless bacteria. He died in 1941.